Dancing at the Blue Lagoon, the sophomore album from LA-based Cayucas is out now worldwide! To mark the release, twins Zach and Ben Yudin sat down with Daniel Kohn of LA Weekly to talk songwriting, the recording process, and BMW commercials. Read the whole article here

A restless artist recasting R&B and a musician with a few stories to tell on the long drive ahead, Steven A. Clark is a straight-talker in a genre filled with wish-fulfillment, whimsy and cliched beats. On The Lonely Roller, his Secretly Canadian debut album due out September 18, the descriptions of emotions and bad breaks, of flawed characters extricating themselves from tragic affairs, arent just a set-up or storytelling device. Its personal identification set to song, new additions to a canon looking for fresh blood.

“I dont want to just be some guy trying to bring something back, but I always think there is room for a flawed character,”Clark says. “The characters in the songs and me, theyre often the same guy. Thats why I use my actual name. Theres no point in just talking about the character on stage.” By pairing raw, confessional singing and personal stories with pulsing synthesizers and rhythms that hang in the air like a glowing grid of roadside neon, Clark is charting his own creative path.

Miami by way of Fayetteville and Little Rock, Clark’s musical journey began in the south with roots in hip-hop. Attracted to the honesty of the form as well as the creative potential, Clark’s own style evolved toward verse. On songs such as lead single “Not You,” he flips a brutally honest breakup tale and draws emotions and empathy from being on the right side of the conversation.“Rhythm and blues aint all candy and hearts,” says Clark.“There is real emotion, and lots of times, artists dont always go there. Tapping into the darker side helps make a song more real, and keeps things fresh.” We love the wanderer with no patience for niceties, who cant be bothered by saccharine stories, because we know theyre being called to seek out something more, and Steven A. Clark is the next stranger to roll in from out of town.

Cayucas‘ new album, Dancing at the Blue Lagoon, is currently streaming in full via Hype Machine until its release next Tuesday, June 23rd on Secretly Canadian. Continuing where they left off on their 2013 debut, Bigfoot, twin brothers Zach and Ben Yudin maintain the band’s summery atmosphere, while deepening their California roots with lyrics focusing on their upbringing in the suburbs of Sacramento. Coated in poppy nostalgia, Dancing at the Blue Lagoon is the perfect album for a sunny day.

Following the release of Dancing at the Blue Lagoon, Cayucas will take to the road for a massive summer tour running through July and August. The North American dates are bookended by a special KCRW Summer Nights performance and a stop at Music Fest NW. A full list of shows is below.

“There was a moment, listening to Gardens & Villa’s new song “Fixations,” that I was transported back to 1974 and hearing Brian Eno’s “Third Uncle” from that brilliant album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy). It’s all in the way Chris Lynch and Adam Rasmussen blend buzzy synths, guitars and vocals to make one sonic signature.”

– Bob Boilen, NPR Music

“Their sound has remained the same crystalline, post-punk/synth amalgam that initially drew us in.”

– Caitlin White, Stereogum

There’s a quote tucked into the recent documentary film about the iconic design duo Charles and Ray Eames, commenting on the symbiotic nature of Charles and Ray’s marriage, their work life in Venice Beach, their home life not too far away, and their creative life: “Work is art is life is work is art…” It’s a concept so simple a small child could dream it, yet it’s one we tend to lose in the strange, abstract grind of modern life and modern ambition. For Gardens & Villa songwriters Chris Lynch and Adam Rasmussen, a return to this very harmonious relationship of art/work/life and a rediscovery of the DIY ethos that once defined the pair’s formative creative years mark the defining thread of their head-turning new album, Music For Dogs, which will see release on August 21st via Secretly Canadian.

The revelation that we hear play out so inspiringly across Music For Dogs is one that came at a make-or- break moment for the band last year. Pushed to fall in line as an indie-pop act while their artistic interests lie as much in the avant-garde. Pushed deeper into debt just to keep their band alive. Pushed from within to leave the comfort zone of their longtime home base in Santa Barbara and set up a new HQ in Los Angeles. Lynch and Rasmussen responded by bucking the idea of “art as a career” and making art their very way of life. With a top-to-bottom renovation of a warehouse space in LA’s Frogtown neighborhood they’ve named Space Command and shared with visual artists, designers, and creatives, the pair began to live and write music on their own terms, just as they’d done before their music was placed “on the marketplace.”

Music For Dogs is a deeply personal album that pokes, prods, and even strangely celebrates the zeitgeist of music commerce, pleasure culture, technological advances and the new home they’ve found in Los Angeles. The New Age and Eastern Religion sentiments that rippled across their first two albums (2011’s Gardens & Villa and 2014’s Dunes) have been swapped out with a new sort of zen pop-Nihilism. “My whole life fixation/See if we can make it underneath the radar,” goes Lynch and Rasmussen’s respective call-and-response on first single “Fixations,” a song about the beauty in bottoming out and then finding the false bottom. Under the stewardship of visionary producer Jacob Portrait (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) and with irreplaceable rhythm section Dusty Ineman (drums) and Shane McKillop (bass), “Fixations” and a great deal of Music For Dogs is really just Gardens & Villa doing what it has always done best. G&V creates Byzantine melodies and richly interwoven arrangements for synths, guitars and vocals that work incredibly well on a cerebral level, but wouldn’t upset a late night karaoke outing either.